


The thing about love

by DeyaAmaya



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Aaron is a sweetheart, Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Happy Ending, M/M, Musical magic, Past Kevin Day/Riko Moriyama, Past Relationship(s), Read the notes for trigger warning, Road Trip, background aaron/katelyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24603553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaAmaya/pseuds/DeyaAmaya
Summary: In a world where you find your soulmate through a shared Heartsong, Neil Josten vows to hide his voice away. Inevitably, he runs. Inevitably, Andrew Minyard finds him through songs and late nights up in rooftops, and road trips. Definitely road trips.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 11
Kudos: 172
Collections: AFTG Exchange Spring 2020





	The thing about love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [giucorreias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/giucorreias/gifts).



> My gift for Giucorreias for the AFTG Exchange Spring 2020. Their Prompts were Werewolf AU, Sentinel AU, and Soulmate AU. I decided to do a music based Andreil Soulmate AU. BIG shoutout to Makebelieveanything for being an absolute angel and betaing the disaster this fic was. Endless thanks to Wishbonetea who helped make the fic more legible, and Ariana Renaldi for helping with the plot. You guys rock <3 
> 
> [Trigger warnings for Strangulation and knives.]

**THEN**

"Sure you can't stick around, kid?" Hernandez inquired. The bar owner was entirely too naive, Neil thought privately. But his generosity was one of very few he'd encountered in his life. He shouldn’t think such uncharitable thoughts.

"Positive," Neil assured the man. It wasn’t really a lie, but it wasn’t a truth either. Years of bending, stretching, often abandoning the truth does grow into a terrible habit. "I need to get going." He'd been in Morristown for far too long. 

So Hernandez let him go. 

Time started again.

Neil thought of the days when he was on the run with his mother. She took him from his father and passed through countless cities, small towns, seedy bars and sticky carnivals. His mother was always keeping track of every penny. Neil was forced to sing in cramped motel showers. It couldn’t be helped. The gift (curse) passed down the Hatford line manifested in him. The longer he went without a song, the more a steady pain built in his ribs until it felt like something was trying to claw out of him. It had to be kept a secret. Shut behind closed doors, stifled into a fist. 

"But how will I find my soulmate if they don’t get to hear my Heartsong?" he recalled asking his mother one stupid, stupid day. His mother beat the thought of soulmates out of him.

"Soulmates will only hurt you," she'd hissed. Only then did Neil remember he never heard her sing, never heard her complete his father's verses like the couples he sometimes saw on the TV. "Get the thought out of your head. Forget your Heartsong, you understand? Abram?"

He'd said yes but a Heartsong is like a part of you, like a limb. You don’t just cut it off. It's just not done. That's the thing about love. Back then, he swallowed his protests, kept his head low. 

Now? The only difference was the absence of his father's shadow over his back. Oh, and he no longer had to hide his voice behind a curtain of cascading water.

He’s on the road for three days when he came across Phoenix. 

_Too many people. Too many smartphones. Too many security cameras. Too many-_

_No_. Neil strangled the hiss in his mind. Just enough people to blend into. The city should be big enough to find work in. Dusk was approaching when he did just that.

Twilight advertised itself to be an eatery with a live stage. Neil dusted off the guitar slung across his back, tried in vain to straighten the wrinkles in his plaid shirt and scuffled in.

Off the bat, he found difficulty. The manager drove a hard bargain.

"An actual band of singers is coming to perform in a couple days," she said, turning her nose up. "We don’t need a bum like you."

Neil regretted not staying with Hernandez for a few more days. Especially when he shifted his weight and felt a blister pop under his heel.

"You should start advertising then." He gestured at the empty stage and the empty tables around it. "I can get people hyped for their appearance, and you can thank me with a couple meals. How's that?"

A few more rounds of shameless haggling, and the owner (who introduced herself as Dany) complaining about Neil's clothes, he had a solid deal. Three meals for the next three days, and he would sing every evening for those days. He was also allowed to set up a tip jar. Not bad, Neil thought. The city probably had a park he can sleep in. 

Time stopped.

More specifically, time stopped when he sang. It'd been a couple years since he started singing for money. No matter how small an audience was, he still clammed up once in a while. But the world fell away when he sang his heart out.

"That's it for tonight, folks," he said into the microphone. "Don't- don’t forget to tip. And come back tomorrow for some 'real music'." He would've rolled his eyes if Dany wasn’t hovering about. "Twilight will be hosting a band to surprise you guys, so don’t miss it!"

Neil didn’t envy the band. The sound system in the Twilight was dismal. Maybe they'll bring their own stuff, who knew.

The handful of days not spent on the road did help, as did the regular meals and the jar of tips.

"I'm not going to miss you," he mulishly told the stray kitten that'd taken to joining him for meals behind the parking lot. Her fur was full of fleas and dirt, and Neil wished he had a place to stay so he could take the kitten home. She nosed at his shoes as he wrapped up his feet in bandages, preparing himself for another few days of walking, walking, a little hitchhiking and some more walking. 

"Stop scratching, these are my last good jeans," he murmured to the cat. There was a shiny black monster of a car parked right in his view. A car like that… he could go anywhere. He could even sleep comfortably in the backseat. 

He hummed a little, testing if he needed to sing any more before he could safely go without for a couple weeks. There was no ache left. Good.

"Oh, Apocalypse? Good voice for that."

The jovial, if slightly nasal voice startled Neil into dropping a roll of gauze right on top of the cat. He looked up at the stranger sitting not five feet away and - where did he come from? How long had he been sitting there? 

The boy? Man? He was as small as Neil and clothed in soft blues and greens, his nose and mouth obscured under a mask. His eyes were smiling under a shock of blond hair. 

_Who? Why? How long…? What now?_ Neil tensed, fight or flight response slithering up his muscles but the other man didn’t miss a thing.

"Relax," he said, in a softer voice than before. "I just really liked your voice. And… I'm a little desperate. I need your help with something." 

Neil's incredulous silence must've spoken for him, because the other man looked away with a little embarrassed huff. It was clear to anyone taking a first glance at Neil that he couldn’t really help anyone. 

(He could, if the situation was dire enough. But shh. Neil couldn’t let anyone know.)

"I'm Aaron, Aaron Minyard," the man said. "I'm part of the band that was supposed to play here for a few days but," another huff. "I got strep throat."

"Should you even be talking?" Neil asked, incredulous.

"Not really. But like I said, I need help. We can't cancel the performance, so I need a replacement. Your voice is very similar to mine." Aaron looked at Neil expectantly.

Neil swallowed a couple times before his tongue was working, "Um, I don’t know what you’re talking ab-" 

"We can give you a lift. Anywhere from here to South Carolina," Aaron offered, his eyes darting to Neil's messed up feet and then away. "Anywhere. You can also sleep on our couch, we're renting a couple rooms in the motel across the road."

Transport. Neil's feet ached with phantom pain. A roof over his head after ages. Perhaps he could even negotiate meals.

"Okay." 

**NOW**

_You are not alone_

_I've been here the whole time singing you a song_

_I will carry you, I will carry you_

The spring day is balmy at best, humid where Neil's clothes bunched up as he sat curled on the passenger seat of Andrew's Maserati. The song made it hard to look at any of the occupants in the car, though they were all humming it under their breath. Aaron had complained about it being an absolute earworm when Neil first sang it in front of him in their tiny vocal room. _Too catchy,_ the blond had mock pouted. Memories that still made Neil warm inside his ribs. 

The song ends with a floating note, but Aaron continues to hum till the next one comes on. There's a scuffle in the back seat, and Aaron's arms come to rest loosely around Neil's shoulders.

"I can't believe you debuted with your Soulsong," he says. "It's been so long - are you really never going to let us hear your Heartsong? Is it that precious?"

"Aaron," Kevin admonishes from the back. Neil hears the pout when Aaron sighs. "Fine, fine. Can you blame me? If his Soulsong is this pretty, imagine his Heartsong! It'll be a chart topper for the next century!"

Neil hums noncommittally, and Aaron retreats. They all knew Neil wasn’t going to make his Heartsong public.

They also knew it was a touchy subject for Kevin Day, Heartsongs and Soulsongs. 

If a Heartsong is tied to a person's romantic love, then Soulsong comes from the love that ties them to their family. Unlike a Heartsong which one is born with, a Soulsong has to be made from scratch. It has to be scoured from the depths of their soul. Kevin's Heartsong and Soulsong both are steeped in blood and pain and suffering. 

(But Kevin is getting better, isn’t he? He no longer regrets debuting with his Heartsong when he was still bound in contract with Edgar Allen Entertainment Co. He doesn’t spiral remembering that Riko was a shitty, shitty soulmate who tried to strangle Kevin because he got praised more. He doesn’t regret leaving them and coming to the Foxes Entertainment Co. He instead focuses on how he debuted with the Foxes with his Soulsong, and how it was a bigger hit than his Heartsong.) 

"Next exit?" Andrew's voice tears through Neil's thoughts. Kevin hums, already busy checking his backpack. 

"Don’t slack off while I'm away," he tells Neil. "And don’t pick up smoking again," he directs towards Andrew, who doesn’t even deign to look into the rearview mirror. Neil suppresses a sigh. He'll bet his best pair of shoes that Andrew was going to pick up cigarettes at the next gas station and will upload a shot of them on Insta. He probably won't even smoke any, but that'll vex Kevin endlessly.

Aaron groans after dropping Kevin off, stretching across the spacious back seat and proceeds to cat nap through the stifling heat of the afternoon. Neil dozes off too, only waking when Andrew pulls into a nearly empty parking lot of a diner called Dolly's.

"Let's stay there," Neil says, pointing his chin at the B&B next to it. They all needed a shower and some rest. 

The diner looks to be taken right out of a child's definition on what the place was supposed to look like. Faint music drifts out through the windows, the plastic tablecloths have white and red checkered patterns, and it smells so, so greasy. Andrew lets out a pleased grunt at the menu which boasts waffles 24/7. 

"No vegetables," Aaron chortles after scanning the menu in his brother's hand, "good thing Kevin isn’t here."

"He'd bully them into making something healthy out of thin air, knowing him," Neil counters. 

Aaron leaves to play with the jukebox. A jukebox, huh. The diner must be so old. 

"Did you decide?"

Neil looks up to find Andrew watching him intently, his brows quirked. A little shock wave runs under Neil's skin. Andrew's eyes always do that to him. It is maddening. 

Neil smiles. "Not yet."

  
  


**BEFORE**

The first time Neil met Aaron's band mates, he nearly threw himself out of the window. 

Because, well, there was Kevin Day. What on earth was Kevin Day doing here? Neil had been trying so hard to throw off all traces of his past and now Kevin was glaring at his face. _Karma, what did I ever do to deserve this?_

Then there was Andrew, Andrew Minyard. Aaron's twin apparently. Black on black on black, and Neil knew danger when it stood in front of him. His every instinct told him to run but Aaron had a strong grip on his wrist. 

Andrew didn’t let Neil out of his sight for hours when Kevin and Aaron taught him Aaron's lines. Andrew wrote and composed but rarely sang. Aaron and Kevin took turns singing. Kevin wrote his own lines often, and got into arguments with Andrew. They were the Monsters, a group from the little known Foxes Entertainment Co., taking a road trip and testing the waters before they debuted. 

It was dawn before Kevin finally deemed his singing somewhat acceptable. Neil was ushered to the couch, and he slept dreamlessly after months. 

Waking up was a lot less pleasant, especially when he found Andrew going through his backpack. The memory always irritated him, but he couldn’t really blame Andrew, he found. It was what Neil would've done. He just would've done it without getting caught.

Three nights of performing, and Aaron got his voice back. It was scratchy, but the songs embraced him like an old friend and Neil faded into the background.

Or he would've, if Aaron hadn’t intervened. He roped Neil into practicing vocals with him everyday, eating with them, even switching with him on stage with the excuse that his voice was exhausted. He basically strong-armed Neil into a quick, albeit shaky, friendship. 

The other two members of the band seemed to be on opposite ends of a spectrum about the fact. Kevin only cared about Neil's voice, which he criticised endlessly yet saw potential in. 

"You could debut someday," Kevin said one morning, then promptly ruined it with, "but you're such a slacker." 

Andrew was… well, he was Andrew. He didn’t trust Neil, didn’t like him, and cornered him on his run one day.

Neil's back slammed into the brick wall of a dingy alley. The light of dawn only just breaking through the overhead structures to illuminate the angry curl to Andrew's lips. It made indignant fury bubble up in Neil's gut. Shoving Andrew back was futile, he was like a wall, like the one against Neil's back. The retaliation earned him a knife held against his jugular.

"I was right," Neil huffed, breathless from his morning run and then the scuffle. "I knew there was something fishy about those armbands."

"Runaway," Andrew warned. "What do you want from Aaron? Or is it Kevin?"

"What?!" Neil couldn’t believe the audacity. "Your brother is the one who bullied me into singing his parts, did you forget?" 

Andrew wasn’t fooled. "And Kevin? Your shrine to him?"

Fuck. Neil had hoped Andrew would not have seen his binder, but he was out of luck.

"Fine, I'll tell you. Get the knife off me."

He told Andrew. Not everything. He of course said nothing about his gift of a voice that could twist and pull people's willpower. It was called the Voice of an Angel, alluding to the ethereal beauty of the bearer's voice. Hatfords, the family Neil's mother came from, believed one of their ancestors had stolen the gift from an actual Angel. The Angel cursed the bearer to suffer through generations, it seemed. Whoever was unlucky to be born with it became the target of greedy monsters that wanted to control the gift and milk it for their own benefit. Like Edgar Allen's owner Kengo Moriyama. Like Neil's father. It obviously had to be kept a secret.

But Neil told Andrew the truth about his father, his mother, how she took Neil away from his father to prevent his servitude to Edgar Allen Co., and that she died.

"Your father?"

"Dead," Neil refused to tell him more. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. The day was a nightmare that made the scars across his body burn, it made him never want to open his mouth again. He still refused to believe he could sing something so vile, something so cruel, something so powerful it razed the Wesninski compound to the ground. 55 people in the radius of half a mile, dead.

Perhaps it was enough. Perhaps Andrew recognized the darkness in his words. They walked back to the hotel side by side, Andrew's knife tucked safely in his armband. 

Thinking back, that was the start of Neil coming to trust them. Those few minutes in the stinky, dark alley were a breaking point, but also a starting line. 

So after a week of sharing a room with them, and another week of sharing a ride, when Kevin tentatively asked Neil to maybe consider joining them as a trainee, Neil swallowed his survival instincts and said yes, yet again. 

**AFTER**

"Remember how you couldn’t decide where to get off when we offered you a ride to anywhere, and we ended up adopting you?" Aaron pipes up, dropping into the seat beside Neil. 

"Kevin adopted him, you just played with him once in a while, like a stray cat," Andrew challenges his brother drily. Neil doesn’t know whether to agree. It's true that Kevin handled most of Neil's training, but without Aaron's casual laughter, touches and jokes, he would not have survived the grueling routine. Really, without Andrew's promise of protection, he would've bailed the first night. Not to mention the other Fox trainees who reached out and made Neil one of their own, let him tentatively put down his roots so long unused.

"You're having trouble deciding again, aren’t you?" Aaron teases. "What are we supposed to do with him, Andrew?"

"Dump him at the next town," Andrew says, exhaling the words with a cloud of smoke. Neil was right, he did buy cigarettes. But Neil was also wrong, because Andrew is actually smoking them. His lips part against the filter, and Neil's thoughts drift.

The next town is Evergreen. A tiny speck on the map, literally just a couple of streets of houses around a gas station and some food places. The church at the other end of the street is holding a wedding, and everyone except one miserable gas station employee seem to be attending. 

A bell rings, then there is cheering, and lastly a song, blaring from cheap speakers. All three boys in the car cringe, then Aaron breaks into laughter. Neil grimaces. The couple getting married didn’t have matching Heartsongs. That isn’t the problem, people married non-soulmates all the time. But these two have the gall to pretend they did have the same song. 

"Who are they fooling, really," Aaron whispers from the back seat after his fit is done. "It's so obvious that he's just copying her part of the melody. And the lyrics are… ugh!"

Andrew snorts and pays the gas bill. They're tearing out of the town even before the pathetic song is finished. Neil can't really bring himself to make fun of them. After all, Kevin's Heartsong was a perfect match for Riko's, and look how well that turned out. 

(A part of Neil thrashes in frustration. At least they're able to sing their Heartsongs to each other. Neil doesn’t even have that.) 

  
  


**BACK THEN**

"Fuck you," Neil spat, nearly voiceless. He threw his notes right into Kevin's face and stalked away, only to hole himself up in a deserted vocal room and scream his frustration out. It felt good, but it wasn’t nearly enough. He sang and sang and sang and it wasn’t enough for Kevin, and he accused Neil of not taking care of his voice. If only he knew how far his mother had gone to purposefully wreck Neil's gift- 

"Are you trying to destroy my eardrums?"

Neil gasped, scream cutting short. The room wasn’t deserted after all. Andrew was there, tucked into the corner and blending into the dark wall with his black on black on black ensemble.

Something sarcastic came to the tip of Neil's tongue, but the only thing leaving his lips was silent air. Andrew frowned, then stepped closer to Neil.

"Let me see," he demanded, and Neil obliged. He tried speaking again, and winced from the sting. It hurt to swallow. Andrew's frown darkened.

"Junkie," he admonished. "You fucked up your voice the first week. How are you going to survive?"

Survive? Neil was all for walking out of the Foxes training building right now, half healed blisters be damned. Maybe it was too clear in his eyes, because faint amusement splashed across Andrew's face. He brought up a hand to show Neil.

"I'm going to touch your neck. Nod only if you’re absolutely okay with it." 

His neck. His most fragile, most vital, most treasured spot. Neil nodded.

Cool fingers probed gently at first, then started a slow massage. Neil didn’t know when he closed his eyes, but they opened when the comfort stopped. Andrew had withdrawn his hand and was staring intently at-

Loud knocking jolted them both. Andrew's frown was back full force.

"Stay here, let me handle it," he murmured to Neil before leaving the room and closing the door behind him. 

Whatever passed between Andrew and Kevin that day, Neil didn’t know. But Kevin was undoubtedly more attentive to Neil's training, and Andrew-

Andrew started taking care of Neil. He taught Neil exercises to polish his voice. He showed Neil lyrics that might go with his image. When Neil stayed in too late, he showed up with food. He kept Kevin in check when he started harassing Neil again. He made sure Aaron's enthusiasm didn’t tire Neil out.

Aaron noticed. Nothing escaped him, really. Neil caught his eyes sparkling with mischief once or twice, but he never really teased Neil about getting special treatment.

(And it WAS special treatment. Andrew only ever pampered Aaron like this. Neil felt undeserving.) 

Neil missed it at the beginning, but it was slowly becoming obvious. The day Andrew caught him with a cigarette between his lips was when he knew for certain. Andrew took the stick from Neil and crushed it, glowing cherry and all, in his fist. He left without a single word to Neil.

"Don't do that again," he spoke two days later. Neil was so relieved that Andrew was talking to him again, he agreed without a second thought. 

It was unusual to be taken care of this way. His mother's affection came rarely, attached with a condition more often than not. Andrew expected nothing back.

One night, Andrew talked.

After practice, Neil sometimes followed Andrew up to the roof of Fox Tower, the dorm where the trainees lived. Andrew never pressed him to talk, and Neil relished the blanket of silence that draped over both of them. He breathed, and lived. On days full of chaos, the thought of those moments of peace was all he clung to. 

It came as a surprise when Andrew started talking. It came as a bigger surprise that Neil actually enjoyed it. His gravelly voice was a perfect compliment for the night, the stars, the two of them. And when he listened, listened and listened, Neil found his own words spilling between the precarious space between them.

The late nights became theirs. Neil got used to a knock on his practice room at midnight. He got used to the little snacks Andrew got: ice cream for himself, something more substantial for Neil. It was comfortable. It felt like home. 

"Mayday really doesn’t sound like something you'd write," Neil told him one such night. Kevin and Aaron were about to debut and Neil was vibrating out of his skin from excitement. "Then again, you wrote something so nonsense like _Whisper yourself into my heart_ for Aaron so I can't really say anything."

"Mayday suits Kevin," Andrew commented. Tonight he had a beer instead of his sweets. The slight tightness in his shoulders clued Neil to his nervousness. 

" _I knew love was blind, but your love is unkind?_ " Neil teased, getting flicked on his forehead in retaliation. He laughed and scooted away.

"It's going to be bigger than his Heartsong," Andrew said after a long silence. 

Kevin's Heartsong was shamelessly written by Riko. _When these pillars get thrown down, it will be you who wears the crown, and I owe everything to you?_ Bullshit. 

"Mayday is his Soulsong, and it’s going to hit much harder. Watch him."

It was. The Monsters debuted first with Aaron's Heartsong Whisper, then Kevin's Soulsong Mayday. Whisper's ranking was respectable for a debut. Mayday broke the charts. Amid the hugs and congratulations raining around them, Neil spotted Andrew offering a rare, proud smile to Kevin. He watched, transfixed till Aaron jumped on his back like a monkey.

"Neil, we did it!"

"You three are amazing," Neil offered.

Aaron twisted to look at his face. "What the- no! I mean all of us! The Monsters, the Foxes, _you_! All of us!" 

_Home_ , Neil thought dazedly. He found his way home.

**RIGHT NOW**

Aaron is about to spend a month with his girlfriend, and he is ecstatic about it.

"I'm not going to sing, not even going to listen to music when I'm there," he makes sure to tell Neil and Andrew, who both keep their mouth shut. As if Aaron would be able to keep from singing for a single day.

Andrew suggests driving through the night just so he can get rid of Aaron sooner, but both his twin and Neil vote to find a place for the night. The B&B is ramshackle, but Neil's back would be thankful for a bed. 

An unforeseen spring shower chases them to their rooms right after dinner. Neil waits to fall asleep, but there's a quiet knock on his window at the stroke of midnight. He opens the rusty thing, smiling at a familiar sight.

"What stopped you from using the door?" Neil asks Andrew even as he crawls out the windowsill, accepting the snack which turns out to be a popsicle.

"There's nothing healthy in the store," Andrew offers as explanation, sticking his own popsicle in his mouth. 

The return of their old routine soothes Neil in a way he hadn’t known he needed. Even if it isn’t the Fox Tower roof, it is still him and Andrew. It is theirs, this silence. 

But Neil breaks it first, today.

"Aren’t you going to ask why I don’t want to sing it? My Heartsong?" 

Something has been prickling at Neil for days. Ever since Aaron started bugging him about his Heartsong. Ever since Andrew stopped Aaron from asking too much, pushing too much. 

Aaron is Neil's best friend, perhaps. But Andrew is Neil's… well, he is Andrew. Neil wants him to ask. Neil wants him to know. 

Andrew, to his credit, doesn’t even twitch at the question. "No. It's none of my business."

"Isn’t it?"

Neil's whisper is deliberate, purposeful. Andrew's eyes glow in the sparse street light reflecting off raindrops.

"Neil," the single word has a hint of threat, a hint of breathless disbelief mixed in. Neil knows. He's been listening to Andrew sing for months. He loves the way Andrew sang his name.

"Yes," Neil shot in the dark. 

Time stops. 

The rain hastens, battering against Andrew's stony profile. Neil waits.

And waits.

"I want to kiss you."

Time starts again. 

"Hmm, you cannot," Neil hides a smile behind his half eaten popsicle. "We're celebrities now. What if a paparazzi is spying on us, right now?"

"Neil," the threat is clear now, and Neil lets out a helpless peal of laughter.

"I have an idea," he says cheerfully. "Here, give me that."

Andrew watches as Neil steps closer to exchange their popsicles before getting back to a safe distance again.

It's been a while since Neil heard his mother hissing at him for being an idiot in his head. It is loud now, almost loud enough to drown out the rain, the drumming of his heart. He focuses on Andrew's eyes. The world falls away.

Neil brings the popsicle to his mouth, the exact bit where Andrew's mouth had been moments ago. Strawberry. Sweet. Cold. Like what Andrew's lips must be right now. 

Speaking of-

Andrew casually crushes the popsicle under his boot as he stalks towards Neil, crowding him against the brick wall. Déjà vu, huh?

The concentrated furrow between Andrew's eyebrows promises retaliation, as did the fingers raking through Neil's hair, tilting his head back. Andrew's boots gave him a boost enough to look Neil in his eyes. Pupils blown, his stare slides down to rest on Neil's mouth.

The thundering knock from Neil's door is like a heart attack.

"Neil! Kevin called. Come talk to him!"

They are both frozen in space, rainwater having free reign over still muscles, eyelashes and lips, and collarbone hollows. Neil closes his eyes and counts to ten. 

"I'm coming! Don’t break the door!"

**IN BETWEEN HEARTBEATS**

Perhaps Aaron had seen something in Neil's drenched face last night, heard something in his voice as he fumbled to assure Kevin that _yes, he wasn’t slacking off on voice practices and yes, Andrew really did smoke, no not the whole pack, just one stick and fucking hell Kevin give it a rest._ Whatever it was, Aaron is quiet all morning while they drive. Before he bounces off to meet Katelyn, he wraps Neil in a hug.

"Don't hurt him," Aaron murmurs cryptically, offers a blinding smile and then, Andrew and Neil are alone. 

With no destination in mind, they explore Pensacola. Neil picks through a souvenir shop, choosing two t-shirts that Andrew unceremoniously takes back to the shelves. Andrew buys them lunch at a cheap italian place. Neil eats little, his attention caught on Andrew's fluffy bedhead, which meant he went to bed without drying his hair last night. 

Night found them back in the Maserati. The backseat is finally vacant. Neil looks at it for a moment before sliding into the passenger seat besides Andrew, who throws a map on his lap.

"Choose."

"Dying to get rid of me," Neil quips. But it's shaky at best. Andrew shoots him a glare.

"Fine," Neil doesn’t make a move to touch the map. "Isn’t there a beach nearby? Take me there."

Andrew's eyebrows disappear under his messy bangs. "Beach?"

Neil looks away from him. Out into the night, he thinks he can hear the faint crash of waves. "Yes, yes. I know what I told you. But I need this." Lowering his voice, he adds, "I need to give you this."

He can faintly recall one night, out of nowhere, telling Andrew about burying his mother on a California beach, right before his father's men caught him.

"I can't run from beaches all my life," Neil says. "I used to love swimming, you know."

His eyes still trained outside, Neil feels Andrew's fingertips brush over the back of his hand, once, twice. He turns his hand and laces their fingers together. 

The stretch of beach Andrew takes them to is deserted at nearly midnight. Neil refuses to give into the shivers crawling up his spine and steps barefoot on to the sand. Andrew is silent as a cat, but close enough, a warmth against Neil's back. 

"I know it hurts. It's hard to breathe sometimes," Neil hums. The beach. The scent of blood. Cold. Coldcoldcold-

_No_. 

That was another lifetime ago. Now he has Andrew. The scent of last night's rain. 

Warmth.

"I know you can't remember how to shine. Your heart's a bird without the wings to fly," he croons, forcing his eyes to the shoreline. Andrew's words. His own words. Nights spent with their heads close together, writing out Neil's Soulsong. Together. Together.

_Don't ever let anyone hear your heartsong_ , Mary Hatford growled along with the waves. _You know your voice is special, what if they're not your soulmate? What if your voice forces them to sing your heartsong back to you? What if you hurt them?_

No, no, Neil wouldn’t. Because his Heartsong is Andrew. It had to be. It is Andrew. It is late nights on rooftops. It is love and care given without strings attached. It is Andrew's voice, deep as the ocean, rough as gravel, rolling like clouds. It is Andrew's words, written carelessly on pages and napkins and tabletops, on the back of Neil's hand, on his calf when he's wearing shorts, on the side of his guitar. It is Andrew, it is Andrew, and Neil would voluntarily drown in the ocean he is. Neil would not be the prisoner of his own mind, own memories. He has Andrew. 

How long he stands battling himself, singing his Soulsong, Neil doesn’t know. He vaguely notices dawn breaking before his legs give out and he falls into Andrew's arms.

Neil sleeps. He dreams. Knives and fire and bullets came and went. He wakes to a face full of sunshine and Andrew singing.

Singing Neil's Heartsong.

Is Neil still dreaming?

But no. The melody is the same, but Andrew starts with words Neil could not have assembled himself. Just like a proper Heartsong should be. Differing in lyrics, similar in melody, melding into each other seamlessly. 

Andrew is sitting on sand, getting his black jeans dirty. He'd taken his shoes off sometime during the night. Neil's head is cushioned on his chest, the song driving straight from Andrew's rib cage to Neil's ears and down to his fingertips. 

"’Cause if we don’t leave this town, we might never make it out," Andrew sang unhurried. Neil knew how the melody would run afterwards, how it'll hook and twist. He's known it forever. He's waited for someone to sing it back to him.

Andrew pauses for breath. 

"I don’t wanna live like this…." Neil whispers. "If the sun don’t shine, on me today, if the subways flood, and the bridges break…" he stops to listen to the hammering of Andrew's heart, clear, frantic.

"Jesus Christ can't save me tonight," Andrew continues, tipping Neil's head back to find him smiling up.

"Decide on me," Neil coaxes. "Yeah, decide on us, oh-"

His words get lost somewhere as Andrew shoves him down on the warm sand and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, till they are breathlessly laughing into each other's mouth. 

"You," Andrew says.

"Yes, me," Neil breaths. "Us."

If there were more words to the song, they get lost momentarily. But Neil finds new ones in the gentle nip Andrew leaves on his lips, the sweet taste of their kisses, the tremble in Andrew's breath as Neil whines into his ear.

"I need to tell you something about my voice," Neil tells him. 

"Can't it wait?" Andrew demands with his teeth on Neil's zipper.

"Fine," Neil huffs. 

And the thing about love is, it waits happily for the right time.

\---------- fin ------------ 

**Author's Note:**

> For reference here are the songs I used-
> 
> Kevin's Heartsong: I belong to you (Muse)  
> Kevin's Soulsong: Mayday (Victon)  
> Aaron's Heartsong: Whisper (VIXX LR)   
> Jean's Heartsong: Heaven (Troye Sivan) [Yes I know this wasn't in the fic but this song fits Jean SO much.]  
> Neil's Soulsong: Carry You (Ruelle)  
> Andreil Heartsong: Sleep on the floor (The Lumineers)
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr! I'm Andreil-Minyasten.


End file.
